.. learn how to expose properly, and take some freaking pictures for God sake or sell your gear and jump to sony for all I care... Just stop this nonsense.

how do YOU "expose properly" for a scene that exceeds your Canon's DR?Are you content to clip highlites and shadows and live with the out-of-camera tone curve for every shot?If so, your advice may not register with the more artistic photographers.

Aglet Aglet Aglet ::Shakes head:: I expose the way I expose...Dear god son, this is photo 101, well maybe 102. This isn't hard...A real photographer knows what needs to be done, and makes the photo even better...This is pure pixel peeping madness and it's disgusting.

Awinphoto gets some positive Karma from me today (yeah...yeah...no more Karma. I know)

This is something I really don't get with the dynamic range fetishism. I LIKE images that go from pure black to pure white. Usually, I'm not trying to reproduce exactly what is in nature, I'm trying to interpret it and that often means eliminating extraneous detail in shadows and highlights. Photography is all about simplifying nature. I enjoy the challenge of taking the chaos of the real world and turning it into a simple, graphic statement.

What idiot looks at an Edward Weston image and screams: "Oh my God. This is terrible, he lost the shadow detail!"

If you want to read, write or care about Nikon, you should go to Nikon Rumors forum and stay there.

That would totally defeat the purpose of being a DRoll Troll.

I just went to the Nikonrumor site. Now I see why Nikon users troll here. Tthe Nikonrumor site is laid out just like Nikon cameras' Menu.

I visit Canonrumors and Nikonrumors at least twice a week ... I have to agree that Nikonrumors site sucks with its lazy and disorganised layout ... but I don't agree with you about Nikon camera's menu ... I shoot with both Canon & Nikon ... the menu layout problem is all in the mind and is solely the photographer's lack of experience with that particular camera, especially if one is primarily a Canon shooter who tries out a Nikon camera (or any other camera brand for that matter), I bet Nikon users will also make such uninformed comments about Canon camera menu system. Canon 70D or Nikon D7100, both are good in their intended use, just need some basic photographic vision and camera knowledge to make good photos. BTW I just had my hands on a 70D today morning (colleague of mine bought it from Hongkong) ... 70D feels better in hand than my D7100 ... I did not get a chance to make any photos with the 70D as we were in the office and did not have a canon lens at hand

BTW, Neuroanatomist I just noticed you have crossed 10000 mark ... impressive achievement ... CONGRATULATIONS! I like your new status "CR GEEK" .. I was on a long vacation with limited time/access to the internet and haven't had a chance to visit Canonrumors as much as I used to ... hope to see many more of your usual helpful posts.

...how do YOU "expose properly" for a scene that exceeds your Canon's DR?Are you content to clip highlites and shadows and live with the out-of-camera tone curve for every shot?If so, your advice may not register with the more artistic photographers.

On my 1DX I just hit a couple of button and bracket, never failed me this far. Generally prefer the results I get from blending exposures over what I get from using sliders on 1 exposure too .

Well, as innovative as the 70D's new dual-sensel pixels for continuous AF are, the overall signal to noise ratios, as reported by DxOmark, have changed very little. Hopefully there'll be less banding in dark shadow for those who need to push it but I thought I'd put together some animated gifs to compare the difference between the 70D and the 60D and then the 70D compared to the Nikon D5200.I hope DxOmark will allow this editorial use of their material here. If not, it can be removed easily enough.I find the complete SNR graphs are more useful to see where the low ISO deep shadow SNR limits are and what the highlite end shows for difference, which combined can help indicate DR and more. Switching between them is a useful way to quickly see the differences.

One take away from all of this though is that somehow they managed to double the number of pixels and add a significantly useful feature (the Dual Pixel AF) without breaking anything. Of course it doesn't look like they made any significant improvement in the low end noise either -- oh well. However, I think the jury is still out until we get a look at the back of a lens cap (or something similar) to see what the pattern noise looks like. I am very curious if any improvement has been made in that area.

I have to say, I was also a bit disappointed by the DXOMark. But actually I start to question the real world connection of their marks. I was looking at the sample shoots of the 70D at dpReview with their nice tool they have. My impression was that the 70D is quite good at high ISO, even beating the D600 in some areas when using JPEGs. The D600 which should actually be better than the 6D (according to DXO), but at high ISO the pictures look either the same (RAW) or the 6D is better (JPEG).At first I didn't see much difference at low ISO, until somebody pointed out some parts of dark color cards. There you can see the advantage of Nikon at low ISO. The Canons have some nasty noise in some colors, even at low ISO. But they represent only a small part of the whole picture, the rest looks almost the same for both. At high ISO the Canon files look either the same (RAW) or better (JPEG).

Also interesting, check out the Fujifilm X-Pro1; this sensor rocks! It easely keeps up with all the FF sensors from Canon and Nikon. Sadly there is no test planned for this camera at DXO, this would be interesting to see.

I suggest we make a blind test for IQ of Canon and Nikon (and others). Select some areas of the preview comparison tool, and take the pictures from different cameras and rank them according to the IQ. This could settle the IQ war for a while. The problem is, that one could select areas that suit one of the two better than the other, but it should be possible to make a fair comparison.I suggest 4 samples of one area at a certain ISO from 4 different Cameras at either RAW or JPEG. Then I would take maybe 6 areas. The cameras can be different in the other areas, but can also be the same. The order of the pictures from one area should be random. For each area the pictures can be put in the order according to their quality. This should give a good idea about IQ of the different sensors.

Canon just does not seem to be able to break that 11 point DR. If only their customers make fuss about it... but Canon customers are not demanding sensor quality and Canon is gladly shipping out decade old technology.

If you click on "print", you'll see the DR of the camera breaks the 11 point mark. Then again, this only matters if you find DXO to be your grail for all things photographic.

That said, though I used to have a pair of 7Ds, I've left the crop world behind so I'm mostly interested in the performance improvements as an indication of where Canon may or may not be going in the future. There sure seems to have been some peaking of late.

I have to say, I was also a bit disappointed by the DXOMark. But actually I start to question the real world connection of their marks. I was looking at the sample shoots of the 70D at dpReview with their nice tool they have. My impression was that the 70D is quite good at high ISO, even beating the D600 in some areas when using JPEGs. The D600 which should actually be better than the 6D (according to DXO), but at high ISO the pictures look either the same (RAW) or the 6D is better (JPEG).At first I didn't see much difference at low ISO, until somebody pointed out some parts of dark color cards. There you can see the advantage of Nikon at low ISO. The Canons have some nasty noise in some colors, even at low ISO. But they represent only a small part of the whole picture, the rest looks almost the same for both. At high ISO the Canon files look either the same (RAW) or better (JPEG).

Also interesting, check out the Fujifilm X-Pro1; this sensor rocks! It easely keeps up with all the FF sensors from Canon and Nikon. Sadly there is no test planned for this camera at DXO, this would be interesting to see.

I suggest we make a blind test for IQ of Canon and Nikon (and others). Select some areas of the preview comparison tool, and take the pictures from different cameras and rank them according to the IQ. This could settle the IQ war for a while. The problem is, that one could select areas that suit one of the two better than the other, but it should be possible to make a fair comparison.I suggest 4 samples of one area at a certain ISO from 4 different Cameras at either RAW or JPEG. Then I would take maybe 6 areas. The cameras can be different in the other areas, but can also be the same. The order of the pictures from one area should be random. For each area the pictures can be put in the order according to their quality. This should give a good idea about IQ of the different sensors.

What do you think?

dpreview doesn't match lighting/exposure between cameras, which makes their comparisons unsuitable, esp. since the High ISO differences between modern sensors are approaching margins of erroor. The Fuji has a good sensor but it's only about equal to other APS-C sensors - it appears better than that due to a lower nominal ISO rating (requires a slower shutter speed to achieve the same exposure as a Canikon sensor). I did a controlled comparison of the Fuji here: http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1223542/0

I suggest we make a blind test for IQ of Canon and Nikon (and others). Select some areas of the preview comparison tool, and take the pictures from different cameras and rank them according to the IQ. This could settle the IQ war for a while. The problem is, that one could select areas that suit one of the two better than the other, but it should be possible to make a fair comparison.I suggest 4 samples of one area at a certain ISO from 4 different Cameras at either RAW or JPEG. Then I would take maybe 6 areas. The cameras can be different in the other areas, but can also be the same. The order of the pictures from one area should be random. For each area the pictures can be put in the order according to their quality. This should give a good idea about IQ of the different sensors.

What do you think?

I think it'd be nice. The only way to compare cameras is to compare apples to apples. DXOmark is probably not perfect, but at least everything is measured objectively and in the exact same environment across cameras, making comparisons easy.

Real world samples would be even better, but rarely will people take pictures in the exact same situation with two different brands of camera.

Just about anyone who knew what they were doing (and was actually trying to make a good, low noise image as opposed to a bad, noisy one) could have done a good job on this scene using either of these cameras. The fact that this guy did not only speaks for his choice of technique not for the quality of the equipment. These shots were made with a deliberate bias to make a specific point. However, in most of these “examples” it turns out to be a moot point because (in almost every case), not only could the image be made with either camera but a dramatically better image could be made with either camera if that were your goal (that is assuming you know how to use your camera correctly ).

Based on the examples continually put up, the number of real images that actually demand application of a single shot technique with serious shadow lifting must be pretty few and far between (otherwise we would not be continually entertained with the junk we are always shown). In this particular case the guy went to Mono Lake and Yosemite and he shows a whole series of magnificent images shot with the Canon gear. Apparently he could not find a real world example in that usually very challenging environment where the Canon gear was not up to the task.

While this particular parameter provides plenty of fodder for the endless sabre rattling over which brand is superior to the other, in the real world of practical photography (save for a small number of specific applications executed over a pretty narrow range of the ISO capability of the equipment) it appears to be pretty much a nonstarter. I would guess that you could probably type out the screen names for everyone that has ever participated in these types of threads on one side of a single sheet of A size paper which is probably not enough to produce noticeable movement on the Canon/Nikon market share needle.

Incidentally, the example we are discussing has to do with pattern noise which has nothing whatsoever to do with the thing the DxO curve is reporting.

Hi Dave, nice to run into one of the other screen names that participates in these threads I would agree that nearly every High DR scene can be captured using techniques that don't require a High DR sensor. But one benefit of such sensor is workflow time savings. Here is a recent example where I shot a home interior for a friend for his real estate listing (using a D800). I wanted maximum IQ so I used two-shot blends for all the shots which had windows, to exhibit the woodsy setting outside his home. In this example it took me 20 minutes to manually blend the image, which I did in PS using layers and masks around the windows. For kicks I also performed the same exposure adjustment using a single image, which took me about 3 minutes. The latter has more noise than the two-shot blend but it's still perfectly usable even at the native 36MP resolution...and much more so at the resolutions the images were displayed at for the MLS listing. If you multiply this by 10 photos then the time savings can be significant...compared to either blends or interior strobe set ups.

I completely agree with this. I think that the primary benefit of the D800 comes in terms of what it allows you to do in PP. You can shove those sliders around with relative impunity where you probably need to be more careful with a Canon solution. The same could be said for the 36 MP where you can leave more room to crop and fiddle with the composition later in post (you pay the price for that in file size, download speed etc. but that has been kicked about forever as well). Incidentally, I saw this image series on DPR one other time you posted it and it was this set that I had in mind when making the post. The images are definitely usable, but I cannot say the same for a lot of the stuff we are entertained with. Bob has a good one of the girl in the red dress as well where I like the D800 available light shot better than the one he lit.

Looking at DxO the luminance SNR seems to be between 1/3 and 2/3rds of stop better than the 7D, a decent improvement. And basically right up there with the D7100.

7D was relatively well behaved when it came to banding at high ISO so I don't know if you will notice as big of an effective help in that regard above what the SNR tells you as you did comparing 5D2 vs 5D3 though.

I haven't carefully looked into it, but it appears that the JPG engine for in cam developed photos might handle high ISO noticeably better than the 7D.

DYNAMIC RANGE:

The DR seems to be a trace worse (although mostly to a small enough degree to not be able to notice real world) than the 7D (although perhaps nearing 1/2 stop worse at ISO200 unless that is just a kink in the graph and within the error bar) until very high ISO where it is a tiny bit better than the 7D.

DR is vastly worse than the D7100 at low ISO and still noticeably worse even at high ISO this time too, in the past Canon usually at least kept up with DR at high ISO, not this time.

It is a shame that Canon is still living way in the past in terms of dynamic range with this sensor.

Once again the measure the masked area thing I did a few weeks back on it proved to be a reliable indicator of DR performance.

Early reports hint that it may have less banding than the 7D which may make the actual effectively usable DR somewhat higher than with the 7D even if it doesn't measure any better for engineering DR though.

COLOR STUFF, CHROMA SNR:

Color discrimination appears to be fairly close to the D7100 (a touch worse under outdoor lighting and a hair trace better under tungsten) and about the same as the 7D for outdoors and somewhat better for tungsten lighting.

Color noise appears to be much worse than with the D7100 and about the same as with the 7D (at least under natural lighting, there is a chance it might be noticeably improved compared to the 7D under tungsten lighting but I'm not sure DxO tests that, I have to check, but I think their color sensitivity only tests daylight conditions? and you can't necessarily extrapolate metamerism index to chroma SNR differences, although often they have tracked, the 70D doesn't necessarily seem to though so it's an open question).

The finer details of what produces better color is a very complex and tricky subject and may depend upon precisely what the question is (say skin tones, vs ocean tones, vs fall colors and whether lighting is outdoor or tungsten, or fluorescent or weak or strong, etc.). Someone who tried to look into things a bit claimed that in the past Canon has tended to avoid nasty peaks or other issues in skin tones for people with certain tones of skin better than Nikon under certain types of lighting often used for shooting people but also tended to be less accurate for colors and not distinguish quite as many overall especially in yellows/oranges. But it is a tricky topic and it surely varies model to model.

PIXEL LEVEL SHARPNESS:

Have not looked into personally, but I know the 7D was a trace on the softer side due in large part to heavily split greens on the CFA. Early reports hint that the 70D might have a bit better acutance than the 7D.

ok, ok, people. Lets just all calm down a bit here. Instead of complaining about how the 70D isn't earth shattering, let's all go look at people's photography, give some C&C, and actually put our opinions to use helping somebody better their photography vs. trying to get the last word.

Right, but you're supposed to be a photographer first and an editor second. DR doesn't help you when you're actually taking your shot, though it might give you peace of mind knowing the very basics of exposing an image is no longer relevant.

That is missing the greater point. It does help you when you are taking a shot since you need to be able to judge whether a certain shot might have too much DR for the camera to handle and whether you need to get into multiple exposures or graduated filters etc., or when that is not possible which can be the case, to realize the shot may struggle to process well.

Sure better DR can be nice when it comes to rescuing blown shots or shots where the exposure wasn't quite dead on but it is mostly about much more than that. If a scene has a lot DR it may exceed the camera's ability no matter how perfectly you expose.

It's not at all just about people who make a mess of exposure all the time simply wanting to be able to escape that. It's rather little about that.